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The year was 717, six years after the landing of the Arabs and the defeat of the Goths. Thus ended perhaps the most decisive battle in the history of Spain. With it new Spain began. The cave of Covadonga is still a place of pilgrimage for the Spanish patriot, a stairway of marble replacing the ladder used by Pelayo and his men. We may tell what followed in a few words.
His plan worked well, the seeming retreat giving assurance to the Moslems, who rushed forward in pursuit along the narrow ledge that borders the Diva, and soon emerged into the broader path that opens into the valley of Covadonga. They had incautiously entered a cul-de-sac, in which their numbers were of no avail, and where a handful of men could hold an army at bay.
Nothing daunted, however, her captain, Carlos Condell the man who had fought the Covadonga so splendidly, and been promoted through several ships to the Huascar continued to stand on until he had approached to within a mile of the mole, when he dropped his anchor and opened a still more furious and destructive fire upon the Peruvian ships.
Then, suddenly, the Covadonga observed a wild commotion on board the Union, and her screw begin to revolve once more, while columns of black smoke pouring out of her shot-torn funnel showed that there was a considerable amount of activity in her engine-room. Then she began to forge ahead and, turning slowly to starboard, headed away to the north.
Covadonga lies in the vicinity of Oviedo, in a ravine lost in the heart of the Picos de Europa; it is at once the Morgarten and Sempach of Spanish history, and though no art monuments, excepting the above named monastic church and two Byzantine-Romanesque tombs, are to be seen, there is hardly a visitor who, having come as far north as Oviedo, does not pay a visit to the cradle of Spanish history.
At the far western extremity of the Pyrenees, where the Sierra Penamerella thrusts its rugged spur into the Atlantic, was a great mountain cavern, Covadonga, large enough to shelter as many as three hundred men, and there had gathered together the strongest of the Christian bands after the Moorish victory in the south.
The instinct of the Christian nationality revolting against the invaders, and the gathering together of the whole soul of Spain on the rocky heights of Covadonga to fall once more upon their conquerors, was all a lie. The Spain of those days gratefully welcomed the people from Africa and submitted without resistance. A squadron of Arab horsemen was sufficient to make a town open its gates.
The old Moorish leader Mousa had spoken well when he told the kalif at Damascus that the Christians of Spain were lions in their castles, and the Moors were repeatedly given ample proof of the wisdom of his observation. "Covadonga's conquering site Cradle was of Spanish might," so says the old ballad. And what and where was Covadonga?
And he began to reel off visions of the cave of Covadonga; the fantastic tree of the Reconquest "where the warrior hung up his sword, the poet his harp," and so on and so on, for everybody hung up something there; seven centuries of wars for the cross, a rather long time, believe me, gentlemen, during which Saracen impiety was expelled from Spanish soil!
But the Covadonga could scarcely hope to avoid a fight of some sort; and her gallant skipper, Condell, was not at all the sort of man to wish to do so. He would at any time much rather stay and fight than run, even though hopelessly outmatched; but orders were orders, and he was wanted at Valparaiso, so for once he was forced to acknowledge discretion as the better part of valour.
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